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Fashion Design News

In a new twist on sustainable fashion, designers aren't just embracing new fabrics made from organic cotton, hemp or bamboo, they're pawing through piles of clothing waste, crafting high-fashion, hand-made items from old cashmere sweaters, T- shirts and other castoffs.

As we searched for the right image to feature on this month’s cover—something timely, and unusually provocative, smart, and beautiful—we realized that all our descriptors still apply, but that “beauty” has become an elusive ideal. Design’s expressions—product design in this case, but we may as well be talking about design at every scale—have become more complex than the foreground objects we celebrated in the last century.

Congratulations to this year's juried R.A.W. Video (real artists at work) contest winners! The contest, open to all current CCA students, challenged contestants to create a two-minute (maximum) high-resolution digital film (including audio) with “In and Out of the Studio" as the required theme.

The goal was to encourage students to pick up their digital camcorders and highlight their community at CCA—whether in the classroom, studio, residence hall—or away from the college altogether. And the goal was definitely met several times over!

This is the first installment in a series of artist profiles that depicts CCA's connection to the Oakland Art Murmur -- in particular to 25th Street in downtown Oakland, where in almost any given gallery, shop, or studio, artists from California College of the Arts are making their living in the arts. Collectively, they are changing the cultural landscape of Oakland, elevating its reputation as one of today’s most talked-about art scenes.

Earlier this summer, while walking along 25th Street between Broadway and Telegraph avenues in downtown Oakland, I found myself appreciating a discernible shift in the neighborhood's appearance. It used to be only abandoned warehouses and defunct automotive repair shops comprised the city blocks in this area (the result of 1989's Loma Prieta earthquake, which took its toll on an already economically depressed downtown Oakland).

Yet now, slowly, one by one, this same area seems to be the impetus for an appreciable spate of creative businesses and artist live/work spaces.

2011 Fashion Design Senior Class

Patricia Lucia Arroyo

Collection: ArdourAwards: Surface Magazine Emerging Talent Award; scholarship/internship with Nicole Miller)
(parroyo@cca.edu)Ardour stems from past memories and experiences of the ocean. The sea translates into a stylized form of self-expression through garments that suggest a sophistication as explored in the seaming, leathers, suedes, hardware, and jewelry techniques.

The Annual Fashion Show 2011 at California College of the Arts, the capstone experience for Fashion Design seniors, unfolded Friday, May 13, with all the characteristic grandstand presentation the college and its community have come to expect. And once again, with 800 persons in attendance, the shindig was completely sold out!

Watch the slideshow » (Select "show info" in the upper right-hand corner to see the name of the designer.)

As part of my recent review of the 2011 Annual Fashion Show, I sat down with Fashion Design chair Amy Williams to chat about her most important event of the year. She's passionate about her work, and I had no difficulty getting her to discuss what truly matters most at the end of the, er, runway: the students and their careers.

Q: So what does it take to plan the Annual Fashion Show? And what’s next?